Abstract: The number of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), especially those involved with research and development (R&D) programs and employed virtual teams to create the greatest competitive advantage from limited labor are increasing. Global and localized virtual R&D teams are believed to have high potential for the growth of SMEs. Due to the fast-growing complexity of new products coupled with new emerging opportunities of virtual teams, a collaborative approach is believed to be the future trend. This research explores the effectiveness of virtuality in SMEs’ virtual R&D teams. Online questionnaires were emailed to Malaysian manufacturing SMEs and 74 usable questionnaires were received, representing a 20.8 percent return rate. In order to avoid biases which may result from pre-suggested answers, a series of open-ended questions were retrieved from the experts. This study was focused on analyzing an open-ended question, whereby four main themes were extracted from the experts’ recommendations regarding the effectiveness of virtual teams for the growth and performance of SMEs. The findings of this study would be useful to product design managers of SMEs in order to realize the key advantages and significance of virtual R&D teams during the new product development (NPD) process. This in turn, leads to increased effectiveness in new product development's procedure.

Monday, 20 June 2011

This paper presents the results of empirical research conducted during March to September 2009. The study focused on the influence of virtual research and development (R&D) teams within Malaysian manufacturing small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). The specific objective of the study is better understanding of the application of collaborative technologies in business, to find the effective factors to assist SMEs to remain competitive in the future. The paper stresses to find an answer for a question “Is there any relationship between company size, Internet connection facility and virtuality?”. The survey data shows SMEs are now technologically capable of performing the virtual collaborative team, but the infrastructure usage is less. SMEs now have the necessary technology to begin the implementation process of collaboration tools to reduce research and development (R&D) time, costs and increase productivity. So, the manager of R&D should take the potentials of virtual teams into account.

Friday, 17 June 2011

miércoles 18 de mayo de 2011

Communication is one of the bases that a human being has, without these tool, the world would not be what it is in this moment, suddenly the humans were still living in caves.

Communication is a tool that all the people use dialy, and we really need to use it on every activity that a person do, and implementing on the organization in a good way could be the best tool that the organization has.

There are a communicator and receiver; inside of the organization there are several communicators and receivers, whose are exchanging messages all the time. In the case of reflexive listener, who is a person that has the skill of listening carefully to another person and repeating back to the speaker the heard message to correct any inaccuracies or misunderstandings.

There exist two ways of communication; One way communication which is when a communicator gives the messages but the message never comeback with an answer, and Two-way communication, which is when the communicatior gives the message and the receiver gives back a feedback.

When we talk about communcation, not only talk about sounds, the non verbal communication is one of the most important parts even on the organization. This is because, the way that a person dress and act says more than a learned speech.

Nowadays, technology is part of communication area, things like internet and social networks are improving new ways to communicate and easily.

A Summary of the Project

Team's Objective

Blue Team's project objective was to research and evaluate different aspects of virtual teaming, including the ramifications on business communication. In order to accomplish this objective the team researched the following topics, as they pertain to virtual teaming:

Among middle east non-oil paramount issues one can refer to pistachio production and its processing industry; Base on this fact, this study attempted to identify the major influences in enhancing success of Middle-East small and medium pistachio processing enterprises, according to their entrepreneur's strategic perception (ESP) and their entrepreneur's background (EB). This research tries to fill the gap of management science empirical researches in small and medium industries, especially pistachio industry. Four concepts of EB, ESP, Entrepreneur's strategy-making activities (ESMA) and performance of small and medium pistachio industry (SMPI) build the prepared empirical model. Modeling and analysis of data performed by using AMOS software, this structural equation model indicated there was a strong association between EB, ESP and Middle East SMPI performance. The model reviewed both direct and indirect effects of the defined variables of the concepts.

Abstract: The number of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), especially those involved with research and development (R&D) programs and employed virtual teams to create the greatest competitive advantage from limited labor are increasing. Global and localized virtual R&D teams are believed to have high potential for the growth of SMEs. Due to the fast-growing complexity of new products coupled with new emerging opportunities of virtual teams, a collaborative approach is believed to be the future trend. This research explores the effectiveness of virtuality in SMEs’ virtual R&D teams. Online questionnaires were emailed to Malaysian manufacturing SMEs and 74 usable questionnaires were received, representing a 20.8 percent return rate. In order to avoid biases which may result from pre-suggested answers, a series of open-ended questions were retrieved from the experts. This study was focused on analyzing an open-ended question, whereby four main themes were extracted from the experts’ recommendations regarding the effectiveness of virtual teams for the growth and performance of SMEs. The findings of this study would be useful to product design managers of SMEs in order to realize the key advantages and significance of virtual R&D teams during the new product development (NPD) process. This in turn, leads to increased effectiveness in new product development's procedure.

Abstract - The number of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), especially those involved with research and development (R&D) programs and employed virtual teams to create the greatest competitive advantage from limited labor are increasing. Global and localized virtual R&D teams are believed to have a high potential for SMEs growth. Due to the fast growing complexity of the new product, coupled with new emerging opportunities of virtual teams, a collaborative approach is believed to be the future trend. This research explores the effectiveness of virtuality in SMEs virtual R&D teams. An online questionnaire emailed to Malaysian manufacturing SMEs and 74 usable questionnaires were received, representing a 20.8 percent return rate. To avoid the bias that may result from pre-suggested answer, a series of open-ended questions asked from expertise. This study based on analyzing an open-ended question; extract four main themes among expertise recommendations on the effectiveness of virtual teams for SMEs growth and performance. These are suitable for SMEs new product design manager to realize the key advantage and importance of virtual R&D teams in the process of NPD, which lead to increase the effectiveness of the new product's procedure.Keywords: Virtual teams, New product development, Survey finding, Small and medium Enterprises.

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About Me

Nader Ale Ebrahim has
a Technology Management PhD degree from the Department of Engineering
Design and Manufacture, Faculty of Engineering, University of Malaya
(UM), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He holds a Master of Science in the
mechanical engineering from University of Tehran, Iran.